


Birds On a Wire

by tsurai



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone In Konoha Needs Therapy, Eye Trauma, F/M, Intergenerational Trauma, M/M, Not Beta Read, POV Outsider, Suicidal Ideation, Swearing, Vignette
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-02 03:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21155039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsurai/pseuds/tsurai
Summary: “Shimura Danzō is dead,” Sasuke says, and as Itachi blinks his eyes open, the words take a moment to register.





	1. Chapter 1

Itachi flies over the rooftops, landing steady only through sheer willpower as exhaustion and the weight of grief drags on his limbs. Each movement makes him hyper-aware of the small shape of scroll pressed into his side, its contents his damnation.

He’s made his choice. Less than twenty-four hours until mission start. 

Itachi only senses the man’s presence in time to jolt to a stop only a few feet from bowling him over. Later he will admit – if only to himself – that Itachi only sensed him at all because the man wanted him to. Despite his exhaustion, his Sharingan flare to life as he whips a shuriken at the foreign presence. The figure – all dressed in black – bats Itachi’s shuriken away like a mosquito and meets the ANBU’s eyes with a matching black and red. 

They swirl into ellipses, and Itachi’s breath catches in his throat.

He’s looking at another pair of Mangekyō Sharingan and he _ knows that face_. But it can’t be, his little brother is back at home sleeping and this man is far too old, but…

But Itachi would know him anywhere.

“Sasuke?” he breathes, but he’s already been caught.

His world sinks into red and black.

* * *

“Shimura Danzō is dead,” Sasuke says, and as Itachi blinks his eyes open, the words take a moment to register. In the light of an endless full moon, his little brother slumps, stress carving a furrow between his brows and worn out with nameless trauma. Everything in him speaks of a wish to lie down and never get up again. Still, the smile he gives Itachi is coldly satisfied. 

In a blink, Sasuke is right in front of him, and Itachi tries to jerk away but he knows it’s useless. This illusion doesn’t belong to him, and even when he strains his own Mangekyō, tries lashing out with pure chakra, Sasuke’s power holds him paralyzed so the only things he can move are his chest and eyes. He sucks in a sharp, shocked breath, as the man leans in and wraps his arms around Itachi, squeezing hard. 

“I killed him less than ten seconds after you left. You-” he hisses in Itachi’s ear, his grip tightening until Itachi’s trying to stave off panic, because he _ can’t breathe _. “You don’t have to make yourself a monster for me, not anymore.” And he lets go, backing away. 

As air floods in Itachi can taste lightning and the familiar tang of blood. Itachi can only stare at him: at one eye spinning Mangekyō, the other now concentric rings of lavender and only spoken of in legends. He stares and his first coherent thought since entering Tsukuyomi is _ what the fuck? _

“I fixed it, and I’m barely holding on to _ Amenotejikara_, but I had to see you and let you know-” 

a breath, and Tsukuyomi shudders, rattling Itachi in a way he feels centered in the back of his brain. Vision and sight snow over like the television they keep in the living room, stuck between channels. “-rry I couldn’t save Shisui. And I forgive you.” Through the snow, he can see blood starting to streak from Sasuke’s eyes, dripping down off his chin into cold white and grey. “Good b-” 

Itachi shoots up with a gasp, lying on cool roof tiles and feeling like an icepick has been driven through his forehead.

Halfway across the village, Sasuke’s steady chatter to his mother about his day at the Academy is broken when his rice bowl clatters and cracks against the table. Mikoto and Fugaku whip around, crying out in horror when they find their youngest slumped in a dead faint against the table, eyes and nose already dripping crimson. 

* * *

Itachi is gasping by the time he finds Sasuke’s hospital room; he’s had no time to process anything, has been running from one point to another since he regained the ability to stand. Arriving to a compound abuzz with the news of Sasuke’s medical emergency had turned his thoughts from turmoil and questioning sanity to blind panic. He had no room for logic when it came to Sasuke, not after what he just experienced. 

Not when he’s seen that cold, satisfied expression from many shinobi on realizing death was an inevitability. Not when he barges in without knocking for probably the first time in his life outside a mission and is faced with a team of frantic medic nin and his parents clutching each other in the far corner. He joins them as they watch, helpless and raging in their helplessness.

* * *

Sasuke gains consciousness within minutes of Itachi’s arrival. Several things happen in quick succession, then.

His brother, not even eight years old, bolts up with a familiar Mangekyō spinning in his right eye, flat black in the left. He looks around frantically, and when his gaze lands on Itachi, standing by their parents, Sasuke freezes.

Croaks, “I was supposed to disappear.”

And before anyone can move to stop him, attempts to gouge his Sharingan out with blunt, childhood nails. 

A minute later Itachi’s little brother is blissfully sedated as the medic nin quickly work to mitigate the bloody mess he’s made of his face. 

Healer Miyamoto walks towards them a few minutes later. 

“Apologies, Uchiha-sama, but the prognosis isn’t good. He’s still running a high fever, and while the scarring should be minimal, his cornea was shredded and we won’t know the effect on his vision, or his kekkai genkai, until he wakes...”

A sharp ringing tone rises in Itachi’s ears and he stops paying attention to the conversation, shock giving way to dawning horror as everything that’s happened this evening trickles in.

The whole world feels backwards, and Itachi can barely hold on through the flood of questions that cannot be answered. A silent _ kai _does nothing to dispel his sense of vertigo.

By morning, the news that Shimura is both dead and a traitor to the Leaf has spread to every corner of the village.


	2. Chapter 2

Mikoto worries. Of course she does, she’s a mother; worrying is her job.

But she is also a killer, and _ oh _ , how dearly she wishes to wet her blade with the blood of the man who tried to kill the light in Itachi’s eyes. The first time he met her gaze after Sasuke’s collapse, she _ knew _. 

By morning, the man who ordered her clan’s death has been found in several pieces, the genjutsu hiding his corpse lifting as first light struck the square outside the Hokage tower. 

In the Hokage’s office, a stack of papers suddenly appears on the desk, startling the pair of ANBU left to guard the empty room. 

Mikoto sees nothing, hears none of this until hours later when Sarutobi sends a runner to summon Fugaku. Fugaku hesitates before he rises, the only sign of his reluctance to leave Sasuke’s bedside. 

He leaves, the door shut silently behind him and then it’s just she and Itachi, and the medic nin who rounds every fifteen minutes to check her youngest’s vitals. The only sound in the room is their breathing, and Mikoto squeezes Sasuke’s too-warm hand between hers. She needs the reassurance, his little chest rising and falling steadily under her watch, so she doesn’t look up when Itachi finally moves to Fugaku’s vacated chair on Sasuke’s other side.

And then Itachi says, “Mother, I…” and his voice sends ice shards down her back. She snaps her gaze up, looking at him, and his eyes are red.

She knows the Mangekyō. As the wife of the head, she’d made it her business to be in on the clan secrets, if only to lighten the burden on her son’s shoulders when he inevitably stepped into the role.

She knows both her sons have, somehow, had something irreparable broken in them as of this night, and it is her duty to find what has done this and execute vengeance. 

“Turn it off,” she says, far too calmly for the storm raging inside of her. When Itachi obeys, eyes going black, she signs. The genjutsu she casts then is one of her own making, and so familiar to her that she can do it with a single handseal. A bubble of silence drifts over them, spanning several meters in every direction.

A glance to the clock. Twelve minutes until the next check in. 

“Tell me.”

He does, struggling to keep his voice emotionless, but Mikoto can read in his hitching breath his shock, his anger, his overwhelming guilt and self-disgust. 

“And then?” she asks, when he comes to a pause describing those last minutes where, across town, his little brother collapsed. The report has been short. Two minutes before check in.

Itachi holds a hand to his mouth, and tears build in his eyes but don’t fall as he looks down at Sasuke’s sleeping face. He holds his breath for a long moment until Mikoto begins to worry, but it gusts out. 

“There was a man, and he told me ‘Shimura Danzō is dead.’”

* * *

Hiruzen would sell his soul to the Shinigami to go back to bed and pretend this day had never happened. Alas, such is the privilege, and burden, of his position. And with Uchiha Fugaku on his way, he has only minutes to gather his thoughts before the Elder Council and clan heads begin to beat down his door. 

Already, he’s puffing on his pipe and trying not to focus on the curl of paper and the precise characters all but etched into his mind’s eye. It was pride of place on the stack of files, now tucked away into his desk drawers to be exposed at the proper moment.

When Homura and Koharu ghost through the door, faces grave, Hiruzen closes his eyes and takes one last breath of smoke to prepare himself. 

* * *

_the Uchiha _ _ must live_


	3. Chapter 3

Yamanaka Inoichi has walked through many minds, very few of them sane. Shinobi life doesn’t lend itself well to sanity, with those more grounded in reality often not making it out of the genin corps, if they graduate at all. 

So Inoichi knows many flavors of mental illness, from the harmless variety like Maito Gai’s to Mitarashi’s more bloodthirsty antics. Often, there is little Inoichi can do for them, therapeutically. Trying to coax Hatake through healthy coping mechanisms is like beating his head against the Hokage mountain, and Inoichi would give a sizable amount of ryō to never again set foot in Ibiki’s head, friend or no.

Still, it takes a special flavor of insanity to close his eyes looking at a small child with bandages over one eye and open them to a man, eyes whole and black as night and _ tired_. He’d been warned, and that’s the only reason he doesn’t flinch when Uchiha Sasuke’s now-whole eye spins into that strange Sharingan for a moment before going black again. 

Very notably, the shinobi’s left eye remains covered, his hair concealing it even as he turns away from Inoichi. 

“Ask your questions,” the man mutters. His mindscape is a world of endless gray ground and black sky; there is little for Inoichi to do but follow when Uchiha sinks into seiza.

* * *

“Why did you come back?” Inoichi finally asks, and by now his hands aren’t shaking only due to how hard he grips his trousers. 

No father should have to watch their daughter die, but now he has seen it. Seen it in a potential future that this man has the power to circumvent.

Uchiha- no, Sasuke – they were hardly in a place to be formal any longer – quirks one corner of his mouth up but half a centimeter. “My world ended. What else was I to do?”

What else, indeed. His report to Sarutobi-sama would probably be bumped from S to an SS-class secret before the ink even dries. After that, he plans a long sake-drinking session with Shikaku and Chōza, no matter what damn time it is.

* * *

Only by force of will does Mikoto stop herself from tensing when the Hokage and his guard step through the door. She sees Itachi twitch minutely before he settles back against Sasuke’s bedside, all but hovering protectively. 

Thankfully, Sarutobi takes in his actions with a small smile. “Peace, Itachi-kun,” he says. No promises of Sasuke’s safety follow, however.

Mikoto meets Fugaku’s gaze over Sarutobi’s shoulder, and when her husband nods shallowly she releases a silent breath. Past him, two ANBU stand on either side of the door, unmoving except for when the tall one in a dog mask presses a pre-written seal against the doorframe. 

The silencing seal activates, and all eyes fix back on the Hokage and her child. Her child, Sasuke, gone forever and in his place a man she hardly recognises. 

(He looks at her with pain in his eye, a pain that is worn down from agony to a gnawing ache by the passage of time. No child, not even a shinobi child in wartime, should have that expression. Her cheerful, clingy son has disappeared and now Mikoto must learn to love the man who stares out through his eye.)

Sarutobi walks to the foot of the hospital bed. 

“Tell me,” the Hokage says, tone conversational and far too mild for Mikoto’s liking, “after executing Shimura Danzō without trial and disseminating S-class secrets throughout the village, all that’s left to ask is what you intend to do next, Sasuke-kun. What am I to do with you?”

It’s a genuine question, but only Sasuke's grip suddenly tightening on Mikoto’s fingers prevents her from reaching for a blade. No one in the room misses their interaction, but her son speaks in a flat tone she'd never heard him use before his collapse.

"Yamanaka no doubt told you, but the child who once inhabited this body is dead." No one misses his lack of honorifics, either. 

The words are like knives, no matter how many times she hears them. 

When no one interrupts, Sasuke releases her, hands relaxing in the manner of a dangerous shinobi attempting to appear less so. It would be nearly comical on any other seven-year-old, but two days ago her Sasuke couldn't go five minutes without a smile and everything about this is _ wrong_. 

"When I came back, I had enough chakra to make a choice between what I wanted and what was needed. I made my decision, and I will die for it if you make me. I had no plans beyond the changes I could make before disappearing."

Unease permeates the air as a small child and an old man stare each other down equally unflinchingly. A minute passes by, another, and Sasuke is the only person besides the Hokage himself who doesn’t tense when he reaches into his robe to draw out his pipe. 

Sarutobi sinks into Itachi’s vacated chair, lighting his pipe with a spark of chakra. Only after a long drag and exhale does he speak.

“Very well. I have already spoken with your clan head. Let us discuss where you stand.”

* * *

Far away, Obito gasps awake in a pool of his own blood, clutching at the badly-healed stab wound over his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for all your kudos and comments

**Author's Note:**

> just writing what muse demands at this point. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ open to pairing suggestions. follow me on tumblr @tsuraiwrites


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